Saturday, July 21, 2007

Banish All Ratings!

FURTHER EVIDENCE of the dumbing down of America is now on display on the necks of Pilsner Urquell. The bottles are adorned with a big "93," its most recent score from Chicago's Beverage Testing Institute....

But who needs a score to choose a beer?

I dunno - someone who wants to impress his friends, maybe, but doesn't have a clue about style, flavor or quality? Who is so filled with self-doubt, he can't spend a few lousy bucks without an expert holding his hand? Whose vocabulary is so limited he needs a number to describe what's in his glass?

A wee bit harsh, but overall, good analysis. Ratings are tough. I really dislike RateBeer and the Beer Advocate's rating system, and wondered if I should have them at all. I do, but uneasily.

3 comments:

Looking at the ratings, the lowest score they gave in the category was 80: http://tinyurl.com/yrn52x

Since 93 is the highest score given (and not 100), does that mean PU is the best pilsner lager, but still not very good?

I'd rather have a subjective description that I can use to see if a drink matches my particular palate rather than a meaningless number. The BA and RB, it seems you get a lot of low ratings because the person doesn't like the beer (or they want to claim some snobbish advantage by not liking it), rather than that it's actually a bad product.

Someplace in your blog, you posted Art Larrance name spelled wrong. You might want to correct it.see"Dick Ponzi, Art Larrence, the Widmers, Fred Bowman--these guys had an early example that you could do such a thing. It may even be that the poor quality of ...beervana.blogspot.com/ - 79k -"